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Take the Guesswork Out of Medical Marijuana

February 8, 2017

In the headlong rush of modern living, it’s easy to lose track of the small indicators that point to your overall wellness. When you’re using cannabis to treat a medical condition, keeping track of your health can become even more complicated.

A new app slated to soon hit the market is designed to fix that problem. Knalysis Technologies is scheduled to take its personal Wellness Tracker app live in the next few weeks. Once released, the app will be available for Android and iOS platforms, CEO Paul Methot said.

The Wellness Tracker app is intended to help patients, doctors and researchers take some of the guesswork out of medical marijuana. The app tracks symptoms, moods, cannabis treatments and unrelated life events to answer one question: “Which symptoms can best be treated by which strains?” Methot said. “We want to track the efficacy of different strains on the market.”

Tracking symptoms

The app comes in two versions. One is designed for general use, while an advanced version is tailored specifically to patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, Methot said.

The general-use version tracks roughly 100 symptoms associated with more than 50 different ailments that can be treated with cannabis. These include multiple sclerosis, cancer and migraines. The app also tracks cannabis treatments by strain, dosage size and delivery method. This latter indicator is important because some intake methods take longer than others to have an effect, Methot said.

In addition to tracking symptoms, patients can also track their moods across six different levels. Moods range from positive emotions like happiness to negative ones like anger and panic, he said.

The different levels of emotions are color-coded, which has proven especially beneficial for patients with PTSD. As their condition improves, they have a visual indicator that they’re making progress, Methot said. “It helps with the hope. The hope helps them realize they’re getting better.” The data can also reveal if the opposite is true; that is, if the patient’s condition is worsening. In that case, they can consult with their doctor or cannabis coach to find a solution, he said.

Finally, patients can track other impacts and their effects. This helps remove life events that are unrelated to cannabis treatments, and provides more relevant data, he said.

Patients can view all this data in graph form, which can help them spot long-term trends. “At the end of the day, what these graphs do is they tell a story,” Methot said. “They show you your patterns and habits.”

‘The data tells a story’

The data doesn’t serve patients only. It can also be transferred into patient medical record systems, where physicians can access it. They can see which symptoms their patients have suffered, what strains they’ve used to treat them, and what ingestion methods they’ve used. Doctors can use this information to make recommendations to the patient, he said. “The data tells a story for them.”

The app can also be used in research groups, providing researchers with a top view of the “big data,” he said. “At the end of the day, everybody wants to get better, and they need this kind of data,” he said.

By Bridget Manley

Top: Analytics Web Portal (photo courtesy of Knalysis Technologies)

Dispensary Management Today articles are for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal guidance or advice on dispensary operations. You should contact an attorney or a qualified cannabis consultant for specific compliance and dispensary/retailing advice.